Word: faunas
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Recently, the increasing number of pleas for human respect for flora and fauna have drawn on deep emotions and the moral imperative of conservation efforts. But until now, Agassiz Professor of Geology Stephen lay Gould has remained peripheral to the conservation fray, scoffing at what he calls the " shibboleths of the movement" and the "Catharsis" of any description of ecological deterioration...
...Ninety-nine percent of all the species that ever lived are now extinct," Wilson read. "The modern fauna and flora are composed of survivors that somehow managed to dodge and weave through all the radiations and extinctions of geological history...
Theroux was bothered less by the terrifying fauna than by many of the people he encountered. The ethnic put-downs of The Happy Isles might be considered racist were it not for the fact that the author is clearly an equal- opportunity disdainer. New Zealanders are shabby and provincial, he complains. Aussies are rude, foulmouthed and drink too much. Tongans are lazy, quarrelsome and mean to their children. Samoans are greedy, hostile and obese, perhaps because their junk-food diet consists mostly of "Cheez Balls" and corned beef saturated with hippo fat. (Did their liking for the latter, Theroux wonders...
...failing to fulfill some of its most important promises. Many conservation areas and national parks exist only on paper. Cattle ranchers, farmers and miners continue to burn, bulldoze and poison the forests. Brazilian environmental agencies still lack the staff and equipment they need to protect endangered flora and fauna. Foreign funds dedicated to Brazilian conservation efforts languish unused because the Collor government, plagued by corruption and staff turnover, has failed to develop projects that would make use of the money...
...pack-rat midden is a snapshot of the flora and fauna existing within about 50 m ((164 ft.)) of the midden at the time it was accumulating," explains Peter Wigand, a paleoecologist at the University of Nevada's Desert Research Institute. Scientists can pin down the approximate time the snapshot was taken by radiocarbon dating of a preserved twig or fecal pellet; the technique can date specimens that are more than 40,000 years old. And by studying middens of different vintages in the same area, researchers can in effect create a movie from a sequence of snapshots, showing changes...